


'Cause soulmates never die

by Macaron



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Future Fic, Hopeful Ending, It's still an Halloween fic, M/M, Melancholy, Romance, They are in B because I was tired of flies and tortelli cremaschi, post book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 14:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16265678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macaron/pseuds/Macaron
Summary: “Are you gonna stay?” I dare to ask him with a voice that I don’t recognize as mine.“If you’ll let me.”Oh Oliver, I would let you do anything.“Let’s go home.”





	'Cause soulmates never die

“Oliver.” He says. And it’s like magic, it’s like coming home.

“Elio.”

“Are you gonna stay?” I dare to ask him with a voice that I don’t recognize as mine.

“If you’ll let me.”

Oh Oliver, I would let you do anything. I’ll let you do anything to me.

“Let’s go home.”

 

 

 

"We should go to Laghetti di Rocchetta one day. You never visited that summer because it’s impossible to reach by public transport and you were too busy to bask on the beach, but it's beautiful in this season. It was one of my mother's favorite place." I suggest him in the morning.

Mirella continues to forget to cut his boiled eggs. Mafalda never forgot it. It’s not serious, not a big deal really.  I could let him do it by himself but there is a part of me that is almost convinced that this is enough to make him disappear. That one morning he will get up, he will notice the uncut eggs, he will pack his bags and will return to America as if these days, as if this life had never even existed. It's ridiculous. I wouldn’t mind even if he gets the tablecloth dirty trying to open them. I don’t even know if in these years he has learned how to open them. I compared every relationship, I compared every single fuck of my life with few weeks with a man I don’t even know if he is able to open eggs.

"If my memory serves me, It wasn’t me the one who came home in the afternoon with the taste of the sea and Marzia on him."

The only touch of our fingers seem to produce an electric shock inside me, like it happened when his foot stroked mine under the  table. I wonder if I'm going to embarass myself again  making me get a nosebleed (would he runs away? Would this be enough to pack up and go away? I can’t ask it).

"It's funny, you'll always come here from the city, from Milan to stay at the beach, to enjoy the sea and still my mother preferred some little lakes in the mountains" I say.

"She isn't the only one."

I don't understand immediately.

"You came here from the city, from Milan and you have chosen a berm as your spot."

"It was Monet's berm!" I reply pretending to be deeply scandalized.

"It's not- You two are not easy. I'm not saying you don't enjoy simple things, you don't enjoy the sea or making breakast here. It's just, you are not easy. You never were."

And I'm not sure of what is saying but I'm sure with every fiber of my body that he is really talking about me.

“There is no-one else.” I say suddenly.

Oliver looks at me for a moment as if he really didn’t understand, then he realizes and his words seem like a remembrance of our summer.

"No one else?"

"No one else."

He comes closer and kisses me. I can feel his smile. "I hope there's really nobody else."

I raise a brow.

"We've been together for days, if there were anyone else hidden in the closet he would have died at this point."

"Maybe he's a vampire." I joke.

"Maybe, he is a ghost."

I kiss the tip of his nose.

"We don’t go to the Laghetti today, stay here." He says, his forehead still leaning against mine.

"Do you want to go back to my spot? I could read something for you, or you could write there."

Oliver smiles at me as if I had suggested the most extraordinary thing in the world. For a few moments I no longer fear that one morning  he can leave for some uncutted boiled eggs.

 

 

 

There are letters from America on the cabinet at the doorway of the Villa. I would like to say that I don’t know how many are, I would say that when I pass by the doorway I don’t notice them or that after days I have forgotten them but I know exactly how many are (three), in what order they are arranged (the first in contact with a bill of electricity that I have to pay, the other two buried by a catalog of Mondolibri that my father had subscribed years ago) and from how many days no one has opened them (twelve).

I spend minutes, hours to imagine who wrote them. The handwriting of the address is always the same for allo f them, I have noticed that the only time I took them in hand. Oliver's wife? Oliver's sons? A wife would have called,  a son would have written. Or maybe I just think this way because I would have written and not called and I'm projecting myself into those unopened letters (but I've hardly ever even written).

What will be written in those letters? Will they be angry letters from those who can’t forgive a betrayal? There will be prayers "Please Dad come home." Or "Oliver he doesn’t deserve you, you could have much better than a kid, you've got a life here. A wife. Your sons." Will there be a forgiveness written in those letters? (I forgave him, they could do it too. Even if it's not true, I've never really forgiven anything and anyone, at least not myself). I don’t even know who gave them my address. Was it kept in an address book since they came to visit my parents?(when I wasn’t there) Oliver wrote it in a note that was crumpled up in a moment of rage and then pulled out of the trash?

I could know what is written in those letters. All I should do would be to ask him. But Oliver should first open them and this doesn’t happen in twelve days.

It's not like I'm hiding them. Oliver knows very well where those letters are, he passed in front of them every time he left home. I'm not hiding anything from him. Not from him. Ever.

But there are unopened letters on the cabinet at the doorway of  the Villa.

" "Don’t you want to reply? Don’t you want to call them?" I could go out, I could leave him alone, leave him his privacy for that phone call but it's not that he really needs it, he has a cell phone and can very well use it.

" Don’t worry about it." He says while stretching himself lying in heaven. Oliver's body is no longer what he was at twentyfour , there is a different softness in him that makes me feel the need to protect him and at the same time there are scars, signs of time, of a parallel life that I don’t have lived and that make me want to turn the other way, to get up and never come back.

"And you don’t patronize me"

"I don’t do it."

I could shut up. It’s not my family, not my business.

"Don’t worry."

But on the other side of the globe there are people waiting for an answer. Waiting for him.

"Can you really put all your whole life in a box and not think about it anymore? Did you do that with me too?" I can’t stop myself from asking him.

He stares at me.

"I had a postcard on a wall in my office, you've never been in a box."

But we were in a box, we were inside a bubble and neither of us had the courage to make it explode and give us a chance to find out what we would have been out. Neither has ever had that trust, that faith.

"I don’t say I didn’t try." Oliver continues. "But you kept coming out."

"Oh really, and how so?"

“Because I wanted you out.”

And then making everything become a joke he adds"Or maybe it's because you're too long" He comes closer and pretends to try to pick me up to fit me into a box "I couldn’t get you anywhere": Oliver laughs while we wrestle, my legs twisted to his body, his hands tickling my belly.

"Don’t worry about those letters." He whispers before kissing me.

I don’t worry about those letters.

 

 

 

Whenever Oliver speaks of Milan, my heart loses a beat.

"I'll have to go and buy some heavy clothes for the winter." It’s afternoon, we are lying on my (our) bed, his head resting on my belly, a hand that lazily draws something on my knee (musical notes? Constellations? American houses where would he like to come back?).

"I could lend you mine."

"I'm afraid they're a little too short for me. I'm not a Milan fashion expert, of course." He grins.

Milan. Milano. The winter. Nobody talked about winter during our summer, no one talked about what would happen when I returned to Milan. I thought about it, of course. I tried to think about it so as not to find myself unprepared for his departure but I never really did. I never could imagine a future without him (not during that summer, not after) but I never allowed myself to imagine a winter with Oliver.

I never allowed myself to imagine what would happen outside of our perfect bubble, of those few weeks together.

Maybe if I had done it, maybe if there were more moments like Rome, moments where we weren’t out of time but with people, with an everyday life, real moments, maybe then in that case I would have been able to say something in that bathroom of the airport. Maybe I would have asked him to wait. Maybe I would have told him "Yes, I do mind." at the news of his engagement. Maybe if I had not been afraid to get out of our bubble and enter the real world, these days would have come sooner.

God, we wasted so many years.

"If my clothes are too short for you, you could go around naked."

"Would you like it?" He says kissing the back of my knee. His eyes never leave mine.

"No." I snort.

"We could do tourists for Milan." Oliver adds. "You could take me around the city, as we did in Rome, we could lose ourselves in the fog, eat the real risotto alla milanese. You could fingering me before going out, like in Rome."

At those words I feel my cock harden.

"You would absolutely need heavy clothes in that case, I wouldn’t want to spend the evening at the police station."

"I would rather spend it another way, mh?"

I imagine Oliver in Milan and I can’t help but smile.

"You turned me into a Victorian heroine." I tell him.

Oliver takes one of my curls between my fingers. "You would never have been a Victorian heroine, you would have been the knight."

 

 

 

Oliver's shorts are dirty with grass. I remember how Mafalda hated to remove the dirt of grass from my clothes when I was just a kid. “E’ un inferno, sciura.” It’s a hell, Madam. She always said to my mother.

My mother was always complaining, always telling me that I should be more careful. My father smiled, snorted, kissed her and told her to let me do, to let me play without worrying. "The important thing is that you always say Grazie when someone does something for you, Elio." I can’t remember the last time I thanked Mafalda for clean linen but when I see Oliver's shorts on the bed, that memory comes back to my mind. I wanna say thanks today.

"Mirella!" I call her. “Ho lasciato i pantaloni del signor Oliver sopra la lavatrice, sono tutti sporchi d’erba se è un problema smacchiarli li possiamo portare in lavanderia.”

“Chi è Oliver?” She asks.

Chi è Oliver? She asks.

And for a moment I think I didn’t hear well what she said. Who is Oliver? Oliver, the man who has been in this house for five weeks now. The man who fucks with me every night, in my room, in our room. The man who has breakfast with me every morning, the man who eats the eggs you forget to cut. Oliver that asks me to play at piano for him that song again, yeah that song again.

I'm about to start answering to her when I see Oliver in front of me.

He passes in front of her and she doesn’t say anything, like if she didn’t even see him.

I'm about to start talking when  my eyes meet Oliver's as he walks away to my room.

I say nothing and follow him while I hear Mirella calling me.

"Tutto bene, signor Elio?"

No, nothing is alright.

"Don’t open those letters." Oliver says.

"Why?" I ask him and maybe I already know the answer.

"I don’t want you to find out from there, I don’t want you to read it from there."

"What should I read in those letters?"

"They say when it happened, how it happened. They are from my eldest son, I told him about you, maybe because I saw you in his eyes sometime. He wrote you right away, I'm sure. I know him. He wanted to give you time for ... " He smiles as his voice softens.

"When did what happen?"

"When I died."

And this is it.

I feel like I've always known it. When I didn’t say anything to Mirella about the uncut eggs and the fact that she only served a cup of coffe in the morning. When we have never gone out with friends. When I didn’t open those letters. When he said "Oliver" in front of a taxi door.

"You never came back." I tell him.

" I did not have the chance."

We had twenty fucking years and we didn’t have the chance. We have had all the time in the world and we have wasted everything living in a coma. We had time, we had all the time in the world. I want to scream.

Oliver hugs me as if he could hear my thoughts (maybe he can).

"Is it my fault?" I ask.

"What?"

"This. You. Your death." You here as a ghost, too.

I can feel him laughing, but his laugh is soft, like a caress.

"When I was seventeen I was daydreaming that you had an accident, that something terrible would happen that would make you stuck with us not just for the summer. So I ask you again: it's my fault?"

"My death? No, it's not your fault Elio. Me here? Probably. But I'm not complaining."

"Why can I see you?  Am I crazy?" I ask him.

Oliver smiles on my shoulder. "Before B, before you people looked at me but nobody could see me, no one had ever seen me before you, not really. Ans nobody ever saw me after you, not my wife, not even my children. Everyone stopped at the façade that I projected, they all were satisfied with what I could offer to them.I was satisfied with that life. Nobody has ever seen me after you, not in all my life. I had to come back here, I had to close the circle. You are the only one who can see me.”

I think about my life. I think about all the time I lost. I think of my future, I think of things to do, things I could learn, people I could know, I think about the men I could fall in love with.

I think of Oliver kissing the back of my knee.

“Stay.” I ask.

“Oliver.”

“Elio.”

**Author's Note:**

> My first Elio/Oliver fic. *dont' panic don't panic don't panic. Ok panic!*  
> It's still a Halloween fic so: ghosts!  
> The Title is from Sleeping with ghosts, Placebo.  
> Translation for the italian's parts (which are...surprise: written correctly because it's my language!)  
> "Mirella ho lasciato i pantaloni del signor Oliver sopra la lavatrice, sono tutti sporchi d’erba se è un problema smacchiarli li possiamo portare in lavanderia.” is "Mirella I left the shorts of Mr Oliver above the washing machine, they are all dirty with grass if it's a problem clean them we can take them to the laudry."  
> "Chi è Oliver?" is "Who is Oliver?"  
> Laghetti di Rocchetta are near Bordighera, at the beginning I want send them to the beach of Rattaconigli but when I googled it the first thing I found it was an article about a corpse found on the beach last summer and nope.  
> As always I wrote in english as Oliver speaks in Italian.


End file.
